Alice's Last Goodbye
by g4ll0ws0rch3str4t0r
Summary: Alice has returned to her world, but tragedy awaits. Blood finally comes back after about a year... How will it all play out? ONESHOT! rated T for sad stuff.


**A/N:** This is a oneshot in which Alice has returned home, but Blood does not arrive to take her back as soon as she wakes up. This is based on the Main series of the manga, not a spinoff or whatever. I don't know what kind of medical supplies they had in whatever time period Alice is from, so forgive anything that seems out of place. I do not own HnKnA, or any of the characters. I'm going to shut up now, so enjoy.

Alice lay in her bed, her mind quiet as she listened to the metronome ticking of the clock. She would have looked around the room, had she not done so too many times already. She practically knew every tile in the ceiling, and paint drip on the walls by heart. The painfully bright white of the walls bombarded the girl's eyes, despite the dull nature of the color, it shown with such veracity- reflecting the too bright lights that lined the ceiling, and earning her spite. There was only one window on the side wall of the small room. Alice had not looked through this window in some time, she had looked though it frequently when she had first arrived, but now she found it was too troublesome to crane her neck so far.

Alice tried to lift herself with her arms so that she could readjust, and hopefully alleviate some of her abundant discomfort, but the strain creaked through her limbs, and left her face crinkled as she panted for breath. Even such a small movement proved almost impossible for the girl now, it took too much of the little energy she possessed. She had been confined to this lumpy, hard bed with scratchy sheets for almost a year now. She missed the sun, and the grass, and the breeze. Her soul ached and yearned for the life and energy she always sensed when she was with nature. Alas, she was no longer even allowed short rides in a wheel chair to sate her need for the sun.

Her life had ended, as far as she was concerned, the day she was confined to this room- this wretched room that was too cramped, yet too vast; too clean and too empty, this room that she despised with all that was left of her once fiery being. All those months ago when she had been rushed to this cursed hospital after collapsing in her family's manor, her life had ended. Edith had been the one to find her sprawled on the floor and had cried out for their parents. This had happened within only a week of Alice returning from her time in Wonderland. Oh, Wonderland- nothing more than a distant dream now, existing only to taunt Alice in her time of desperation, how she longed for the strange world. Her heart had failed. All of the doctors were baffled by the strange circumstances; there was nothing in their books, or even their past experiences to explain why her heart had failed. All they knew was that it was currently only working a fraction as well as it should be. Alice knew why though; she had become too attached to her strange dream world, where they had clocks instead of hearts. She had fallen in love, and left a piece of her heart behind. She had felt it when she vanished from atop the clock tower, a throb and a harsh pulling; as if something had been extracted from her chest- and it had. She had paid no heed to the feeling; she wrote it off as the effects of the "medicine". Only later, when she had awoken from her collapse, did she realize what had happened.

Now, she lay alone, waiting for her life to end. Her energy had been fading, just as the doctor said it would. Without a fully functioning heart, she would die; that's what he had said. Alice was not yet out of her youth and yet she was dying. There was a quiet series of taps on the door. Alice knew it was not a nurse, as she had long ago memorized when they came to check on her. Wondering who it could be, she answered, "come in". It was a heartbreaking sound, to her, to hear her own voice; faint and weak, no more than a whisper. It scratched and hurt from not being used, she sounded like an old hag, she thought. As the door opened, Alice felt that she would have fallen to her knees, had she been able to stand. The man who walked through the threshold was one she had lost hope of ever seeing again. "Blood," she whispered- the name strange and foreign on her tongue. He looked exactly the same as he had all that time ago, his hair fell messily across his sharp features as he removed his infamous top hat. His custom smirk was missing from his face as he stalked towards her. "Hello, Alice," his mellow voice cooed, housing a hint of sadness.

"How are you here? Why now, after all this time?" she inquired. At this Blood's face twisted into a grimace, both from the statement, and the broken sound of her voice. Wordlessly, he knelt by her bed and grasped her limp hand.

"Nightmare told me what happened," he stated," Alice, I'm sorry I was unable to get here sooner."

"I had hoped that you would come for me, I dreamt of how it would happen. You would always come and sweep me off my feet… But, you never came, so I lost hope." Tears began streaming down her face. She felt tightness in her chest, and could feel her life draining away. Her vision began to fade as she smiled, and with her remaining strength, whispered three words.

"I love you."

Blood's features dropped, and his face paled as he felt her hand weigh more heavily in his grasp. Her features had relaxed, and her head fell back onto her pillow. He stared desperately into his beloved's blank, hazy eyes, waiting for her to blink. He waited, and waited; he was then forced to realize that he could no longer sense the pulsing warmth that had set her apart in his world. Her heart had stopped. For the first time that he could remember since getting his role, Blood Dupre began to weep.


End file.
